One particular environment in which the system is particularly useful is the determination of copper ion concentration in copper plating tanks. This determination has previously been accomplished by manually taking a sample of the plating solution and testing the solution in equipment simulating the electroplating environment, plating out the copper from the thereby sample solution onto an electrode. The electrode was weighed before and after the plating operation to determine the amount of copper plated out to thus derive the concentration of copper in the original plating solution. This analysis process of plating out the copper takes several hours, and the results are usually not known to the plating line operators in the plating shop for about six hours after the sample was taken. If the copper ion concentration in the plating solution falls outside the range for good copper deposition, the plating will not meet the requisite quality standards. Printed circuit boards require copper plating to build up the circuit traces after the board has been etched. If the deposited copper does not meet the requisite quality standards, the printed circuit boards must be scrapped. Thus, there is need to have current knowledge of the concentration of ions of interest in plating solution so that ion concentration can be continuously corrected to maintain a solution from which top quality electroplating can be accomplished.